How to Organize Minitest/Unit Tests

How to organize minitest/unit tests?

I know several folks coming from RSpec to minitest struggling with the same question. They love the ability to nest using describe/context blocks and want to continue in minitest. There are several solutions:

1. Use minitest's spec DSL: While there are minor differences, the spec DSL gives you most (all?) of the good parts of the rspec DSL. The big difference is the lack of context blocks. But you can just as easily use describe in its place and everything works as you'd expect.
2. Use directories and files: I prefer this option. I dislike scrolling through a 300 line test file, regardless whether its using the spec DSL or the classical xUnit style. I do not find nesting unrelated tests helpful. The same rules for comprehension for code applies to tests. So break it up. Create a directory and place several files within it.

Here is an example of how my test files are organized:

test/
     models/
            user/
                 authentication_test.rb
                 email_test.rb
                 reservation_test.rb
                 user_test.rb
                 username_test.rb

I use this structure whether I'm using the spec DSL or the xUnit style. When using the spec DSL I specify what I'm testing in my describe block like so:

require "minitest_helper"

describe User, :authentications do

  before do
    # ...

How to run MiniTest::Unit tests in ordered sequence?

You can use i_suck_and_my_tests_are_order_dependent!() class method.

class MyTest < MiniTest::Unit::TestCase
  i_suck_and_my_tests_are_order_dependent!   # <----

  def test_1
    p 1
  end

  def test_2
    p 2
  end
end

But as the name suggest, it's not a good idea to make the tests to be dependant on orders.

How do you nest or group Test::Unit tests?

Test::Unit, to my knowledge, does not support test contexts. However, the gem contest adds support for context blocks.

How can you have nested tests with Minitest?

Yes you can. You can do something like this (not the prettiest):

class Person < ActiveSupport::TestCase
  class MovementMethods < ActiveSupport::TestCase
    test "#run" do
      # something
    end

    test "#jump" do
      # something
    end
  end
end

Also consider using minitest/spec and you can write your tests cases more comparable to the Jasmine snippet:

require 'minitest/spec'

describe Person do
  describe 'movement methods' do
    it '#run' do
      # something
    end

    it '#jump' do
      # something
    end
  end
end

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